Stop Snoozing, Start Adapting

by- Josh Bryant

Johnnie Jackson smoking 832 under Josh’s tutelage.

Specificity is king and accommodation is queen. When they work together synergistically, you build a strength kingdom. I hammer specificity because it drives real progress, but there are times in the gym when you gotta change the stimulus. Do it correctly and that is phase potentiation in action.

In plain gym talk, it is proper sequencing to maximize the training effect. You build a base, then you build on that base, and each phase loads the spring so the next one fires harder. Nothing mystical. Nothing cosmic. Just smart planning, no matter what the peanut gallery mutters between sets of half reps.

Get the sequence right and the body synergistically responds. Suddenly training feels like you uncovered a hidden gear!

A high volume bodybuilder jumps into low volume powerlifting and tightens up with density like he has been hauling hay in West Texas all summer. A lifetime powerlifter switches to bodybuilding and muscles start popping in places he forgot he had, like he walked into the gym one morning and someone upgraded his physique overnight.

On paper, none of it adds up. Under the bar, it is exactly what you expect.

Real World

When I trained Johnny Jackson for Raw Unity in 2011 to 2012, nothing illustrated this better. Johnny was not checking scale weight or micromanaging anything. He was enjoying the powerlifting work, and the properly directed novelty stimulus did the rest. It morphed his strength and physique like dumping rocket fuel into an engine that had been idling for years.

He walked into the gym weighing 230. He walked into that off-season meet looking like a stone gargoyle chiseled by a master, tipping the scales at 264.

Desensitization/Resensitization 

That is the desensitization effect and the resensitization response in full living color.

Now here is what sidelines need to understand. The literature uses terms like repeated bout effect, training novelty, phase potentiation, or resensitization. But desensitization effect is the perfect old head  level name for reversing chronic adaptation. It explains exactly what happens in real gyms without requiring a lab coat or a Latin dictionary.

Joe Mackey looking dense AF on his march to a 910 deadlift under Josh’s guidance.

Here is the evidence dump. A mix of lab science and bro science straight from the chalk bucket.

• Change the exercise. Go from a box squat to an Olympic pause squat and your body responds like you just rewired its whole operating system overnight.
• Change the angle. Bodybuilders built entire eras on this. Move a bench ten degrees and your pecs think it is a whole new universe of tension.
• Change rep ranges. A powerlifter doing 10s for the first time feels like they discovered forbidden magic.
• Change intensity zones. Live in heavy triples too long and sets of 10 blow you up. Live in 10s too long and heavy triples do the same.
• Switch from free weights to machines. Constant tension with zero wiggle room is a shock to the system.
• Strongman work. Carry sandbags, load stones, push sleds. People grow like they were dipped in fertilizer. Strength and hypertrophy both jump.
• Add explosive training. Jumps, throws, sprints. Myogenic tone increases almost instantly, muscles look harder and fuller.
• Sprints for non sprinters. Nothing transforms a lifter’s posterior chain and torso density like real sprinting.
• Bodybuilder tries powerlifting. They densify fast.
• Sprinter tries bodybuilding rep ranges. They blow up like they had muscle stored in a warehouse.
• Any meaningful novelty after long stagnation. The body hates boredom. Give it a new stimulus and it wakes up swinging.

This is why off season training matters so much. And it is why specificity is king and accommodation is queen. You need to do the same things right over and over. Training will be boring. Repetition is required. Mastery lives in the monotony.

But if you never change anything, you will never maximize size and strength.

Remember, in most strength sports the goal is not technical perfection. Olympic lifting is the exception. That is gymnastics with a barbell. Powerlifting and strongman are largely equations of brute strength, not choreography.

So you walk the tight rope.
You keep the main thing the main thing.
But every so often, you hit the body with just enough novelty to keep climbing toward the big top.

Stop snoozing. Start adapting.

If you want training that stays fresh, productive, and kicks your strength into overdrive, jump into my Texas Sized Strength Arsenal on TrainHeroic and get after it HERE.